If you sit within the marketing communications department at a company or organization, you have a unique perspective on employee communications as you sit squarely between both sides of that topic.

In my years as both a communicator and employee, what I’ve learned is that companies do not communicate frequently enough with the people that are responsible for making a daily impact on the business. This results in employees that do not feel engaged, involved or knowledgeable about basic organizational goals and achievements. This causes an information ‘vacuum’ where employees fill in the blanks with their own thoughts and rumors to take the place of actual company information.

Effective employee communications programs combines the most pertinent information delivered at the right frequency, with a stated consistently and in the most efficient manner. It should also have a measurement component where employees input on what’s working can be fed back into the program. The actual program will vary from company to company (a bi-weekly email blast of key company news might work for one while a monthly presentation from senior management might work for another.)

Where many companies fail is either the frequency (not often enough) or consistency (how many employee newsletters never get past issue number 2?) How do you combat these pitfalls? A critical component for success is senior management support and participation. They have to commit the resources (usually time) and stand behind the communications team’s efforts to make consistent, frequent internal communications a priority on level of any other initiative that affects the bottom line. Senior management can also hold marcom’s feet to the fire to ensure internal communications takes priority.

Internally communications doesn’t have to be a burden nor be a flashy four-color printed newsletter. It can be as simple as a bi-weekly internal text-only email, a dedicated intranet area or a scroll on the television monitors in the cafeteria or work-out room.

Don’t short-change employee communications. Start by talking with the people in the organization – do they know about the company’s strategies and how they are progressing? Have they not heard about that new contract yet? Do they feel engaged? You may find an opportunity to positively affect the company by bringing everyone closer to the job at hand and how their role makes an impact.

RTC